While app downloads aren't an accurate indicator of usage, they can give an indication of where the market is heading. And in the case of the alt-versus-Twitter war, the app that's currently winning is Instagram's Threads. Meta's take on Twitter is that he has tripled the number of daily downloads of X (formerly Twitter) on iOS worldwide, and has more than double, and in some cases tripled, the number of installs on Google Play. It has become.
It wasn't always like that. Of course, Threads saw a huge spike in new installs after its public launch in summer 2023, but in the months since then downloads have seen frequent spikes as parent company Meta tried various strategies to drive traffic to the new app. It has suddenly increased and decreased. Threads in other apps, Facebook and Instagram timelines. But as the boost from those early efforts wore off, Threads' download numbers declined and they were once again at par with X installs, especially on iOS, according to Appfigures data.
Image credits: app figure
However, the situation began to change near the end of last year.
By late December, Threads was recording more than 500,000 installs per day on Google Play and iOS. The latter then declined a bit during his January, but across both platforms Threads now consistently records more daily downloads than X, and the difference is now even greater. It seems to be expanding.
For example, on February 25, 2024, Threads had 486,803 installs on Google Play and 342,228 installs on iOS. By comparison, X had 225,408 downloads on Google Play and 112,625 downloads on iOS, Appfigures data shows. This is nearly triple the downloads of Threads on iOS and more than double the downloads on Google Play.
Image credits: app figure
Just a few days ago, on February 22nd, the gap was even wider. Secondly, Threads had 382,999 installs per day on iOS, while X's installs on the same platform were only 113,649, or more than three times as many. At this point, Threads had 660,882 Google Play downloads, while X had only 210,475 downloads on the Play Store, which was also more than three times as many.
Threads' daily install rate still waxes and wanes, but is now consistently above X. Over time, this change may eventually start to impact monthly active users as well. If that were the case, Threads would become the primary microblogging platform of choice for most users, despite Twitter's long-standing lead in this space. Additionally, it means that Meta has more editorial control over the information sharing and news ecosystem used by journalists, researchers, academics, news junkies, and others—and Meta The company says it does not amplify or endorse news on threads with political content.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads had 130 million monthly active users (MAU) as of the fourth quarter. In the weeks since then, that number has steadily increased. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the Threads app is doing “very well” in the Japanese market, for example, where Twitter had strong traction.
X said it had 500 million monthly active users as of last fall, but it's unclear how many of those are automated accounts or spam. As TechCrunch reported last month, X appears to have an issue with authenticated bots. Many paid accounts with blue checks accidentally revealed their source by replying to some variation of X's post. “We're sorry, but we are unable to provide the requested feedback because it violates OpenAI's content policy.” — AI canned responses. Find the same query here with Xyou can see that the problem is ongoing.
Threads is not immune to this problem, but it seems more and more people are organically posting this phrase on Meta's platform as a joke to their followers.
Some of the issues with new installations of X may be related to the rebranding from Twitter. Appfigures notes that while month-on-month downloads have increased slightly in December and January, they are still significantly lower than before the rebrand. Threads' January revenue also increased slightly compared to the previous month, but the company expects February revenue to decline.
Image credits: app figure
Image credits: app figure
Decentralized X alternatives like Mastodon's official mobile app and the newly launched Bluesky have barely registered in this competition, appearing as mostly flat lines in the download charts. To be fair, Mastodon has a wide ecosystem of third-party apps, but its network as a whole currently only has around 1 million monthly active users, according to its own first-party data.
Blue Sky also generated a little buzz when it opened to the public earlier this month, but that momentum has since faded. On its biggest day (February 7th, the day after its release), it recorded 79,685 installs on iOS and 55,711 on Google Play, nowhere near the numbers of Threads or X. Still, this social network is still in its infancy, federation has just started, and anyone can run their own Bluesky server. Therefore, it is likely to gain traction over time as an alternative to decentralized Twitter/X.